The Case Of A Confidential Informant Gone Wrong

by Carrie Kahn

Confidential informants -- people who pose as criminals so
they can provide information to the police or some government
agency -- have helped crack some major U.S. cases.

They are part of the shadowy side of law enforcement and operate
in a secret and largely unregulated world.

And sometimes, things go terribly wrong.

'I Was Doing Something Good'

A decade ago, at 2 a.m., a Mexican drug runner walked over
the international bridge that links El Paso, Texas, with Ciudad
Juarez, Mexico, and asked to speak with a U.S. agent.

Raul Bencomo, then an agent with U.S. Customs, assigned code
No. 913 to the runner, Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez Peyro, who went
by the nickname Lalo.

Bencomo says Lalo was different from other informants. He
was well dressed and always respectful -- and anxious to talk
about the Mexican drug lords he worked for.

"He had a lot of information, and the type of information
that he started providing was at a high level," Bencomo
says.

Lalo's information was on the mark. He tipped Bencomo to a
corrupt U.S. immigration agent who was taking bribes from drug
gangs. He also helped crack a major international cigarette smuggling
ring.

"He kept us so busy -- we were so behind on reports that
we told him to go take a vacation just to let us catch up on
reports," Bencomo says.

Lalo wasn't looking to make a deal. And he didn't need the
money -- he was already making plenty in Juarez's drug trade.
But he had his reasons for informing on the drug gang.

"I was doing something good, something positive,"
Lalo said to an attorney during an interview that was videotaped
four years ago.

During several phone conversations with NPR last fall, Lalo
insisted on speaking only Spanish. But in either language, his
story is the same.

"I believe in some kind of justice, and I think I was
doing something good," he said.

On the tape, Lalo looks more like a victim than a drug thug.
He's clean-cut and clearly educated.

"I really was doing something good," he said.

The ICE Target: Heriberto Santillan

The feds paid Lalo well: nearly $250,000 over four years.
His handlers did well,

The El Paso Customs office (Customs later became Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, or ICE) had never gotten much recognition.
Now, with Lalo on board, agents set their sights on a Juarez
kingpin known as the Engineer: Heriberto Santillan Tabares.

Bencomo says the agents were told that Santillan was the No.
3 man in the Juarez cartel.

But as that investigation started, ICE's prized snitch came
under suspicion. At a Border Patrol checkpoint, Lalo got caught
smuggling more than 100 pounds of marijuana stuffed into the
wheels of his pickup. The Drug Enforcement Administration blacklisted
him. ICE kept Lalo on its payroll, and even worked with a federal
prosecutor to get his drug charges dropped. In hindsight, Bencomo
says, the pot in the pickup should have been a warning sign.

"That was the first incident that I ever came across
that he was working both sides," Bencomo says.

Drug smuggling turned out to be the least of Lalo's exploits.
He was climbing the ranks of the drug cartel and was becoming
a trusted ally to Juarez's third in command.

Killings Caught On Tape

In the fall of 2003, Santillan and a band of crooked Mexican
police officers went on an eight-month crime spree -- killing,
kidnapping and torturing drug rivals in Juarez. And Lalo was
with them.

According to documents obtained by NPR, Lalo kept his ICE
handlers informed of the murders piling up in Juarez. In fact,
Lalo secretly recorded the first murder -- and admitted that
he held the victim's legs while the man was being brutally strangled,
suffocated and beaten with a shovel. Former agent Bencomo remembers
listening to the tape.

"It just made me sick," he says. "I had to
go to the restroom and throw up. I took the recording and I told
my supervisor that I didn't wish to be part of the case."

But Bencomo stayed on, and so did Lalo. Bencomo says his supervisors
told him just to make sure Lalo didn't participate in any more
killings.

Today, Lalo insists he never killed anyone, though court documents
show he admitted being present during several murders; he even
acknowledged driving two victims to a Juarez house where he knew
they'd be killed. Lalo said his actions were necessary to maintain
his cover.

"When you infiltrate a cartel, everyone knows you have
to go like what -- like a criminal," he said. "And
you have to act like a criminal."

Every Federal Rule Was Broken

But former DEA Special Agent Phil Jordan says in Lalo's case,
every federal rule and regulation was broken.

Jordan says on top of all that, ICE knew who was doing the
killing and where the bodies were buried, but didn't share any
of that information with Mexican authorities.

Jordan was an expert witness in a civil suit filed against
ICE by relatives of people killed by the Mexican drug cartel.
Among the victims were two U.S. residents. Attorney Raul Loya,
who represented them, said the federal agents handling Lalo were
a joke.

"Are you kidding me? These guys are El Paso's version
of the Keystone Kops," Loya says. "They are poorly
trained, they have limited education, which is fine, but they
had no business being involved in a cross-border covert operation
involving drugs and murder."

The killings in Juarez took place more than six years ago.
Until now, ICE has always refused to talk on the record about
what happened there and why Lalo was kept on the U.S. government's
payroll while he was involved in torture and murder.

In an interview with NPR, Kumar Kibble, a top ICE official
and a former director of criminal investigations for the agency,
says, "I want to emphasize that our primary obligation is
to protect life and limb." He says that the agency's guidelines
for using confidential informants are sound. But in Lalo's case,
he says, rogue agents didn't properly follow them.

"Had management been fully informed, we could have implemented
strategies and taken a different tack that would have ultimately
safeguarded more lives," he says. "This is not an appropriate
case to comment on, because the procedures that we implemented
weren't followed."

The House Of Death

But those familiar with the case wonder how ICE could not
have known about Lalo's exploits in Mexico -- the majority of
which took place at a house in a middle-class neighborhood in
Juarez. It has been dubbed the House of Death.

Today, no one goes to the metal gate at the house where cartel
murderers brought their victims and ultimately buried them in
the tiny backyard. NPR went there with veteran Juarez crime reporter
Carlos Huerta. He says Lalo was the keeper of the keys.

"There were these code words that the bosses would say
to Lalo," Huerta says. "He would say, 'We're going
to have a barbecue.' That meant Lalo was to go and get the house
ready, because someone was going to be brought there and be killed."

According to a document obtained by NPR, Lalo admitted to
Mexican authorities in Dallas that on his way to the house, he
stopped at a local hardware store and bought duct tape and quicklime
-- essential items for binding murder victims and dissolving
their remains.

Eventually, U.S. officials told Mexican authorities about
the bodies buried at the House of Death.

Lorenza Magana, who works with victims of violence in Juarez,
sat vigil with relatives of missing family members outside the
house the night that Mexican authorities began unearthing the
remains.

"We stayed there all night and watched as they pulled
out bodies," Magana says. "It was so horrible. With
every new body, the smell would hit us -- it was horrible. We
came back night after night to see how many they dug up."

In all, there were 12 victims. Magana says she couldn't believe
it when she found out that Lalo, the gatekeeper of the death
house, was a U.S. government informant.

"It hit me like cold water in the face; it just feels
terrible. Here in Mexico, there is no justice, only impunity,"
Magana says. "So where are we going to find any help if
we can't trust the U.S.?"

But it wasn't just the people of Juarez who were outraged.
When the El Paso DEA office got wind of what was happening, the
agent in charge was stunned.

"I was shocked. I couldn't believe it," says the
DEA's Sandalio Gonzalez. He got involved after two DEA operatives
in Mexico were targeted by the Juarez drug gang that Lalo worked
for. Gonzalez says when he tried to question the informant, ICE
circled its wagons around Lalo.

"We have threats against the lives of DEA agents, we
have dead bodies, and you don't want to let us talk to this guy?"
he says. "What is wrong with this picture?"

'This Is An Isolated Incident'

Gonzalez lodged a complaint against ICE. He also tried to
get Congress to investigate, but that went nowhere.

ICE's Kumar Kibble insists that his agency has already thoroughly
investigated the matter.

"We have thousands of informants that are active that
we are managing on a daily basis," he says. "This is
an isolated incident, where in fact the person was held accountable
when they didn't follow our procedures."

ICE says the fault lies with former agent Bencomo, Lalo's
handler. Specifically, ICE officials say Bencomo was terminated
because he didn't tell supervisors that Lalo was still involved
with murder and torture in Juarez.

Bencomo was the only one fired as a result of the Lalo fiasco.
Two ICE employees were forced to take early retirement, but others
received light reprimands and are still on the job.

This is the first time that Bencomo has talked publicly. He
views himself as a scapegoat and says his bosses at ICE and their
bosses in Washington knew all along what Lalo was doing.

"He would report a murder, and either we heard it on
a phone, nobody told us to stop doing the case," Bencomo
says. "We were told to continue, so for them to say that
they didn't know about it, that is a total lie."

'I'm Just Fighting For My Life'

Whether or not the top brass knew about all of Lalo's exploits,
there is no denying they used him to nab a Juarez drug lord and
lock him away. Once the case was done, ICE was also done with
Lalo. The agency began deportation proceedings with the intention
of sending him back to Mexico.

Lalo has been in solitary confinement for more than five years.
He's in jail not for any of the crimes he allegedly committed
in Mexico, but because ICE says he no longer has a legal right
to be in the U.S.

"Right now, I'm just fighting for my life," Lalo
said.

For now, he said, jail is better than the fate he faces in
Mexico.

"I don't know if they are going to keep me here for the
rest of my life," he said. "Right now, I'm just trying
to say, 'Don't put me in the hands of the people who are going
to try and kill me.' That's all I'm doing right now."

ICE says it learned some lessons dealing with Lalo. NPR obtained
an internal agency memo written in May 2004 that clearly prohibits
using informants who commit crimes. The memo stated that those
rules would be part of a new policy handbook. But during our
interview, ICE said that handbook still isn't finished.

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